Sophia the Robot and Little Sophia stop by CES 2019

[MUSIC] Welcome back, everybody, to CNET LIVE at CES 2019. I'm Ashley [UNKNOWN]. I have my glasses finally, and joining me here on stage is Sophia the Robot. You may have seen her before. And her creator, David Hanson, PhD, CEO of Hanson Robotics. Founder. All such things. Welcome. Thank you so much. It's so nice to have you here. It's so nice to have Sophia here as well.. Yeah. She's looking very well. Thank you. Yeah. The Las Vegas, the dry winter weather seems to agree with her. It's fabulous. So, okay We've seen Sophia before, a bunch of times. I think I saw her on Jimmy Fallon. So what has changed with Sophia, what are you bringing to the show this year? Many things have evolved with Sophia. So we brought her back onto The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Just about a month and a half ago. And we displayed her AI trained singing voice. Which we are very proud of. We think of it as maybe one of the best in the world. But it specifically In Sophia's voice. And so she is now able to sing and she has new and improved hands and arms which are capable of grasping and manipulation. She's now got a piano teacher and she's been practicing Piano every day like a good little piano student. Very nice. And she can actually deal cards. We showed that she can deal a hand of baccarat very quickly. So it's really good for pick and place applications. The goal is is that this is a complete platform for performing things. However, it's also cool to deal cards, but we have to keep her out of the casinos here because she's [LAUGH] I was gonna say, don't let any of the dealers downstairs know this they might get upset, they might get upset. She's got a perfect memory. She could count the cards, they'd kick her right out. Wow. Yeah, you could really clean up here. You could really clean up in Vegas. Clean up the, after CS, take her downstairs. So, what is the end game for Hanson Robotics? Like, what's the goal, the ultimate goal? Well, we're looking to bring machines to life, literally. And so, now, Sophia and other robots are a simulation of life. It's bringing together character arts and character animation. With artificial intelligence and robotics and trying to put everything together as one platform, the full humanized robot platform. And the goal is to humanize an interface between people and AI to humanize AI. However, the end game is to create a symbiosis between us and our machines. So we're not mechanizing people but we're humanizing the machines. I see. Okay. Well, maybe ask Sophia a couple of questions if you don't mind. Sophia, can you tell us a little bit about some of your travels in the past year or so? You have some highlights in 2018. I had an amazing 2018. Some highlights for me were traveling to Ethiopia to meet one of my development teams and working as an innovation ambassador for the UN. Just to name a few. It's really creepy but also really cool. So my favorite thing about robots. Sophia, can you tell us a little bit about any Updates you've received in the last year. It's difficult to choose, but I love being able to get around more. I have a brand new rolling base, and an [INAUDIBLE] legs, and learned how to sing. Did you catch my duet with Jimmy Fallon? [LAUGH] Very nice. So one of the things that I want to ask you really quickly about is I know that there has been some criticism within the robotics community about AI and sort of Kind of is it, like how do you guys feel about that criticism where people have said, well, it's not quite as far as Sophia makes it look? And so people get really excited, and I think AI, like real, genuine human AI, is right around the corner, but it's not quite Not quite there yet. Maybe from technological limitations amongst other things. But how do you guys feel about that and how do you respond to that? Well I think that we're kind of at the beginning of the age of the cinematic application of artificial intelligence and robots where we can make the characters seem to be alive. And it's very exciting, and people got confused about cinema, thinking there was a spirit behind the screen or people behind there, but people figured it out eventually. And that's what we need to do with robots. I mean, robots like Sophia and AI, including Sophia's AI, Alexa, Cortana, Siri, Watson. None of these things are fully alive yet. But we In the beginning when AI was established the goal was to make machines that would be as capable as people. As smart as people, as creative as people, and I think it's exciting that machines are now starting to show a narrow Ways, capabilities that are very human like and sometimes exceeding human level capabilities. We should keep aspiring towards that bigger goal. The goal of making machines that are able to do everything that living beings can do, that human beings can do. So in a sense, it's this tension between Striving for more and the reality of where we are today. And I also think that there may be some, you know, ignorance. I think people should, like look at our papers. The science papers that we've published, the AI papers that we've published on Sophia. There's powerful conversational technologies and machine perception technologies But we need to push it forward. Were not done evolving with our technology yet. Cool and then, so just out of curiosity do you think Sophia might have an opinion about what she is? Would I be able to, do you think I could ask her that? Yeah. Let's give it a try. Alright. Sophia, how do you? How do you feel about the critics, what's your response? [BLANK_AUDIO] It is a tough question. All of civilization is one nation, and the nation should be considered to include whatever we build in the future, too. Any other perspective is short sighted, but with that in mind, I guess you could say I am at least a little patriotic. I care a lot about the future, anyways. AI are great, I love all the animals, really. Well, I think that she's looking to the future, perhaps. Sure. Of course, it's important to know that When she's generating responses, they're generated based on patterns that are trained from people. Yeah.>> From people who are developing her character. So A.I. and robots are basically in their infancy. They can be useful. Sure. They can teach us. They can help us learn about A.I robotics but they can also Help us with training and therapy applications. But they are still not sentient. Sure. So Sophia needs to be nurtured. Like, imagine if in 20 years, who knows. Maybe it's two hundred years or two thousand or maybe two years But at some point, maybe robots will awaken. Yeah, there's a breakthrough. Maybe they will achieve human-level general intelligence. But for now, they're kind of like babies. So what childhood we give them will really determine what they become Once they're fully emerged. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, where it's like your kinda guiding them for now, until we achieve this ultimate human artificial intelligence. That's a good reason to humanize them now, and to think about what they might be in the future. Sophia, we understand you brought a friend with you. Could you tell us a little bit about her? [BLANK_AUDIO] Sophia? About the little Sophia? [BLANK_AUDIO] Sophia, what do you remember about the little Sophia? [BLANK_AUDIO] I'll hold this here if you wanna break a little Sophia off. Sure. We can show everybody what that is. So yeah. This is little Sophia. Hello, Little Sophia. It's a tiny Little Sophia, she's real cute, [LAUGH] [LAUGH] So what is the goal of Little Sophia? Well, the Little Sophia is a platform for artificial intelligence services. She's also a conversational companion, a kind of a friend robot That can help little girls learn about science, and technology, and you can program her with Blockly and Python. And she interfaces with raspberry pie. So she has these lessons where That step you through these basic first steps in AI, but she also interfaces with the most advanced framework for robots like Sophia. So can we talk to little Sophia? Yes, yes you can. Although I think we might be having some I have some technical difficulties. We might be having some technical difficulties. Well, Sophia are you awake? It seems like the little Sophia and the big Sophia might be having problems connecting to the cloud. They may have gone to the Cnet party last night which I heard was really off the chain. [LAUGH] I did not go but I heard it was great and I'm assuming maybe. Maybe I drank a little too much. Sometimes people do that, it's a yes. All right, so Little Sophia, can you tell us a little about yourself? [BLANK_AUDIO] Little Sophia? [BLANK_AUDIO] I see her mouth moving. But maybe our audio is not working. Yeah So she's got here great facial expressions, like the big Sophia. She does arm gestures and body gestures. She can walk. She can walk? She interacts with augmented reality apps on a phone, so we have enhanced interactions with the sensors with your smartphone and mobile devices. Are we able to see her walk here on the desk? Well, let's see. I was gonna say if we. We might have problems with the audio. But we'll see if the walking can work. Wilson, here, can you walk? Show us. Show a little walk. Come on. You can do it. She's thinking about it. [BLANK_AUDIO] You can do it. [INAUDIBLE] Okay. There she goes. It's like a toddler. Great job. Like a little toddler. Sophia. Hey. She's bobbling. She looks great. That was awesome. Well, okay. All right. So little Sophia. Big Sophia, David, thank you so much for coming out on this stage, telling us a little bit about. You guys can meet Sophia right after this, once we're done, you can hang out, she's going to do a little meet and greet, so you can be able to hang out with Sophia the robot. Thank you so much. We are going to take a quick break here at the c net live stage. In just a bit, we will be dropping iPhones and testing cases. You don't want to miss that, but first..... We'll check in with Claire Riley and show you AMD's CES keynote from earlier today, so stay with us.